"Sure," he says, lifting his head in a slow nod for the overflow of words. Stolid by nature, he tends to let others speak their fill, filtering out what he needs or wants to know from it and carrying on through the rest. As she spoke, he'd moved back over the stove, stirring the pot again.

"I guess, I could show you the plants that seem to work for it, if you wanted to gather more." That was really the thing that slowed him down, as he ran out of linens to tear up and boil. The recipe had to keep being adjusted for more plants, and then he had to go get enough of them to make it worth a day's work of boiling and drying.

Stepping back from the steam and flames, he wipes at his brow, lifting his hair up from his face. "You can just use the charcoal too," he adds, now that he knows she might be used to that kind of thing. "I always liked that better than graphite."